Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Hurrah Hurrah finally after 70 days we have a new Irish Government and at a cost?

    

Enda Kenny receives seal of office as Taoiseach from President Michael D Higgins.

WE FINALLY HAVE A GOVERNMENT AT A COST OF €38,500 A DAY IN TD SALARIES OVER THE 70 DAYS SINCE THE GENERAL ELECTION?

An agreement has been reached at long last as Enda Kenny finally scraped in as Taoiseach this afternoon with 59 votes.

However, in the 10 weeks of government negotiations, the 158 elected TDs and the 10 acting ministers who lost their seats have pocketed substantial sums of taxpayer money.

Despite failing to keep their seats in the General Election, Acting Communications Minister Alex White and Acting Children’s Minister James Reilly have taken home pay packets of more than €10,000 each since the end of February.

Although the eight junior ministers who lost their seats in February are no longer collecting their TD salaries, they are still in receipt of a collective €52,893 in additional allowances.

A basic salary is paid to all TDs beginning on the date of the election result, and those with specified positions such as cabinet ministers or ministers of state also receive an additional salaried allowance.

A REVIEW OF MINISTERIAL SALARIES SHOWS:

•  Backbencher TDs have received approximately €16,780 since February 26, amounting to €2.1m for 126 TDs over 70 days

•  Although Acting Communications Minister Alex White and Acting Children’s Minister James Reilly failed to keep their seats, they have still taken home €13,515 each as they continued to fulfill ministerial duties

•  The 11 re-elected cabinet ministers have been paid €30,295 each, a collective sum of €333,245 over 10 weeks

•  Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been paid €35,644, while Acting Tánaiste and Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has been paid €32,943

•  The eight junior ministers who lost their seat, including Kathleen Lynch, Aodhán O’Riordan, Ged Nash and Paudie Coffey, have collected individual sums of €6,611, amounting to a total of €52,893

•  The seven ministers of state who kept their seat, including Simon Harris, Michael Ring and Sean Sherlock, have each been paid €23,391 for their work

According to dissolution guidelines from the Houses of the Oireachtas: “Ministers and Ministers of State continue to be paid their Ministerial salary by the Departments throughout the dissolution period.

“The payment continues until the successor of the Taoiseach (who was in office on dissolution date) is appointed.”

All salaries are subject to tax, PRSI, the universal social charge, pension levy and pension contribution.

In addition to their salary, ministers also receive a number of other entitlements, including a mobile phone allowance and the Parliamentary Standard Allowance (PSA).

The PSA is comprised of a public representation allowance of up to €20,350 for expenses such as office utilities, stationery and advertising, and a travel and accommodation allowance.

The travel and accommodation allowance is intended to cover the costs of transport to and from Leinster house, overnight stays and other travel expenses, and ranges from €9,000 per year for those living in Dublin up to €34,065 for those living more than 360km from Dublin.

A Government spokesperson told Independent.ie: “The Taoiseach and Ministers continue to be paid their salaries as they continue to discharge their constitutional duties as cabinet members and heads of their departments.”

‘The story of 70 million Irish’ told at new Dublin visitor centre

EPIC IRELAND IN CHQ BUILDING CURATED BY COMPANY BEHIND TITANIC BELFAST

    

EPIC IRELAND OPENS ITS DOORS TO A NEW VISITOR EXPERIENCE WHICH TELLS THE STORY OF 10 MILLION JOURNEYS AND THE ROOTS OF 70 MILLION PEOPLE.

The story of the 70 million people who claim Irish heritage across the globe will be told in a new interactive visitor centre which opens its doors in Dublin on Saturday.

Former president Mary Robinson officially opened the EPIC Ireland centre in the CHQ Building in the docklands.

Designed by Event Communications, the company behind the hugely successful Titanic Belfast exhibition, the centre tells the story of the “global Irish family” in 20 interactive galleries.

Included in the stories of 325 people with Irish heritage, are revolutionary Che Guevara whose ancestors emigrated from Galway to Argentina and actor Grace Kelly whose grandfather was a bricklayer from Mayo.

The centre was funded by former Coca-Cola chief executive Neville Isdell, who emigrated from Co Down with his parents to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in the mid-1950s.

Mr Isdell spent €10 million on the CHQ centre, a former 19th century warehouse, in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). Converted by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority into a shopping centre just before the economic crash, the CHQ building was only a quarter occupied when Mr Isdell invested.

Visitors will be issued with a personal “passport” before they take their tour through the galleries, which are organised into four themes. The first is migration, offering an introduction to Ireland and the arrivals and departures that have shaped the country.

The second is motivation, exploring why so many people left Ireland over the centuries, for reasons including famine and war.

The third theme is influence, examining what Irish people have done overseas and the impact they have had in their adopted homelands. The fourth theme of connection allows visitors to share their own stories of Irish connections throughout the world.

Visitors may also explore their family backgrounds with the help of genealogists based at the Irish Family History Centre on the site.

Opening the exhibition, Mrs Robinson recalled her decision as president to put a light in the window of Áras an Uachtaráin for all those who had to leave the country. She said that light had taught her the “power of symbols”.

As president, she also had a real sense of representing the 70 million people of the diaspora, such was the interest of those of Irish descent in seeking and cherishing their Irish heritage.

But she also recalled her disappointment at the “lack of enthusiasm” with which members had greeted her second address to the Houses of theOireachtas as president.

“My address completely lacked humour – there were no jokes at all. And the tone sounded preachy to the Oireachtas members, who responded with rather limp applause at the end. I was quite devastated by the lack of enthusiasm. But almost immediately I got a different reaction from those in the disaspora. Messages came pouring in expressing joy and tears that they had been recognised at last,” she said.

The EPIC Ireland centre opens to the public on Saturday. Entry costs €16 for adults and €8 for children, with discounts available for families, groups, pensioners, students and the unwaged.

Epilepsy related seizures can be predicted by measuring heart rate variability

   

Epilepsy related seizures can be predicted by measuring heart rate variability. The findings come from researchers in Japan who found that epileptic seizures may be better predicted using electrocardiogram to measure fluctuations in the heart rate than by measuring brain activity. This is also effective because wearing a heart monitor is much easier.

Epilepsy is a chronic disease that affects roughly one percent of the population. The disease is characterized by recurrent seizures, which are a result of excessive excitation that suddenly occurs in nerve cells (neurons) in the brain.

Anti-epileptic drugs allow majority of patients to live a normal life, but some patients are drug-resistant, meaning their seizures cannot be controlled by medications, leaving the patients living in constant fear of an impending seizure. Being able to predict seizures can offer these patients greater peace of mind.

Previous studies to predict seizures through heart rate were unsuccessful, and practical application was challenging as well. Dr. Toshitaka Yamakawa explained, “We analyzed heart rate fluctuations in the electrocardiographic data of 14 patients who had been hospitalized for long-term EEG video monitoring using a novel technique.”

The researchers used a Multivariate Statistical Process Control (MSPC) to analyze the heart rate variability. The results produced accurate predictions of seizures 91 percent of the time. Furthermore, predictions were made up to eight minutes prior to seizure onset. The difference between normal and preictal (before seizure) heart rates was very clear, and there were just a few false positives. The results show that it is possible to accurately predict seizures using heart rate.

Dr. Yamakawa continued, “The next step is to develop a wearable seizure prediction device. With that kind of device, patients would be able to ensure their safety before a seizure occurs and since the envisioned device would be attached to the chest, where it’s invisible externally, they would be able to have normal daily lives while wearing it. They wouldn’t need to be afraid of sustaining injury due to an unexpected seizure.”

Additional clinical trials of using wearable devices to predict seizures are now underway.

Brain implants may help predict seizures

An alternative study found that a brain implant may help to better predict seizures. In a small pilot study, 15 patients were tested. The patients were implanted with electrodes between the skull and the brain, connected with other electrodes in the chest. The data from the implants was then transmitted to a handheld device that patients could reference. High risk of a seizure is indicated by a red light, medium risk is a white light, and low risk is blue.

The devices successfully predicted seizures with a “high warning” sensitivity of over 65 percent. Some patients did experience negative side effects, including chest pains as a result of the chest implant moving. Two of the 15 patients did have the device removed.

Lead researcher Dr. Mark Cook said, “Knowing when a seizure might happen could dramatically improve the quality of life of people with epilepsy by giving them back some independence in their lives. A lot of patients with epilepsy will tell you it’s not the seizures themselves, but the fact they don’t know when they will happen, that is the worst part of their condition.”

Dr. Ashesh Mehta, director of epilepsy surgery at the North Shore-LIJ Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center, added, “This study is an important first step. The next step would be to implant these in a larger sample of patients. And you need to see which groups of patients might be good candidates for this.”

Thousands to walk from darkness into light for Pieta House Ireland

    

THOUSANDS WILL GIVE UP THEIR SATURDAY MORNING LIE-IN THIS WEEKEND TO TAKE PART IN DARKNESS INTO LIGHT FUND-RAISERS ALL OVER CORK CITY AND COUNTY.

  The fund-raiser, the most important one staged annually by suicide and self-harm prevention centre Pieta House, is described as ‘the lifeblood’ of the charity’s work. As much as 90% of its annual funding comes via public donations, with Darkness Into Light by far the most substantial source.

Starting at 4.15am, at nine different locations in Cork, thousands will walk and run a 5km route in solidarity to show support and raise funds for the charity.

More than 10,000 people took part in the walks in Cork last year, joined by a further 100,000 people at sites all over Ireland. It shows a remarkable growth for the event, which had just 400 participants in Phoenix Park in 2009 at its first outing.

The feat will be repeated this year at nine Cork sites: UCC, Clonakilty, Mallow, Ballyvolane, Carrigaline, Midleton, Inchigeelagh, Mitchelstown and Castletownbere.

Since opening the doors of its Bishopstown centre in December 2014, Pieta House Cork has supported more than 1,400 clients and 350 families. It has provided 232 emergency appointments. The service in Cork is the busiest in the country, seeing between 50 and 54 people per day. The youngest client to Pieta House Cork was just six, while the oldest was in their late eighties.

Angela Horgan, funding and advocacy coordinator at Pieta House Cork, paid tribute to the ongoing support of the public which has contributed generously to fundraising since the charity’s launch.

She said: “This year, Cork will be a sea of yellow as individuals, families and communities don their yellow T-shirts and walk in a sea of hope and solidarity through nine different venues across city and county.”

For more information on Darkness Into Light and the important work done by Pieta House, see www.dil.pieta.com.

Mercury to pass in front of the Sun next Monday,

AND IT SHOULD BE AN INCREDIBLE SIGHT TO WATCH?

    

It happens around 13 times a century: From our perspective, Mercury – the smallest planet in our solar system – will pass in front of the sun. Most of the world, on next Monday will be able to see the planet as a tiny black dot passing slowly in front of its host star. You shouldn’t stare directly into the sun (ouch), but by watching online or using a telescope with a special filter, you can see Mercury in all its tiny glory.

Warning? If you have your own telescope, you can watch the event using a safety filter to protect your eyes from the sun. If you don’t have a filter handy, you can use a sheet of paper to rig up a safe viewing method – you can project the image of the sun (in the form of a white disk) onto a sheet of paper, then watch the black dot of Mercury crawl across it. You can also check out NASA’s websites and social media accounts for live image updates. If you live near an observatory or science center, you should check out their plans – you may be able to pop in and take a peek on their telescope.

But why should you care? Because it’s a very special event for a very cool little planet.

Mercury has an orbital period of just 88 days, making it by far the fastest orbiter in the solar system. And while Mercury is orbiting, so are we – at a completely different pace. So for our planets to line up just so for us to see the other world sweep over the sun is an uncommon event. This is the first Mercurian transit since 2006, and we won’t see another until 2019.

Wait, you say – that’s a lot of transits to have in just over a decade. How do we average out at just 13 for every 100 years? Mercury passes between the Earth and the sun every 116 days, but its orbital plane is skewed away from our own by a few degrees. It orbits the sun on a tilted trajectory, by our perspective. So its intersection with our orbit has to happen when it’s also intersecting with our orbital plane.

That combination of factors makes for some pretty wonky math: There’s a pattern to the frequency of Mercury’s transits, but it’s not as simple as “every x number of years.” It’s more like “every x number of years for awhile, then y, then z, then y again, and then z three times because why the heck not.” Orbital resonance is weird.

Venus – the only other planet between us and the sun, so also the only other planet that transits from our perspective – orbits much more slowly and on a plane slightly less skewed than Mercury’s. Venusian transits are more rare, but also a little easier to keep track of: They happen in pairs separated by eight years, with each pair separated from the next by a century and some change. If you missed the 2012 transit, you’re out of luck. The next one isn’t coming until 2117.

Transits outside our own neighborhood are pretty cool, too: We use the transits of exoplanets in front of their host stars to detect their presence, and even to measure them and analyze their atmospheres for signs of habitability.

Now that we’ve got the orbital positions of our neighboring planets down pat, transits aren’t the grand scientific opportunities they used to be.

“Scientifically, this was much more important a few hundred years ago,” Nancy Chabot, who served as lead imaging scientist for NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging mission (MESSENGER), told The Post. The MESSENGER spacecraft wrapped up its mission last year when it crashed down onto Mercury’s surface.

But scientists can still get something out of the transit. They’ll be able to analyze Mercury’s scant atmosphere – the thinnest in the entire solar system – in the same way that scientists use the passage of light through molecules in exoplanet atmospheres to search for signs of life. They can even use the event to calibrate instruments on spacecraft, because the timing and positioning of Mercury’s transit over the sun’s surface is so reliable. Telescopes can be pointed in the right direction based on Mercury’s placement, and some instruments can even correct their vision based on the event.

“It’s like getting a cataract – you see stars or halos around bright lights as though you are looking through a misty windshield,” NASA scientist Dean Pesnell said in a statement. Mercury should appear totally black against the sun’s light, but the way instruments scatter light may cause it to look slightly lit up. Scientists can use the event to try to retune those instruments to see Mercury in its true colors, which could prevent mishaps when observing more mysterious objects.

Chabot hopes the event will inspire the public to look up into the sky and think about our planetary neighbors. On Friday, she and the rest of the MESSENGER team released the first ever complete topographic map of Mercury.

“It’s really well-timed,” she said. “People will be looking.”

Her team learned plenty of fascinating things about Mercury during the mission. Chabot said she “didn’t want to pick favorites,” but found three features to be particularly intriguing:

“One is that it’s got these giant areas of volcanic lava that have flowed across the surface in ancient times, which takes up an area more than half the size of the U.S. The epic volcanic events that must have occurred to cause that are intriguing,” she said.

Mercury also has features called “hallows” that have never been seen anywhere else. The small depressions appear to be spots where rocks – ones unable to stand up to Mercury’s environment – sublimate away like snow on a warm day.

“Rocks don’t usually just disappear into space, but they do on Mercury.” Chabot said.

Chabot spent most of her time focusing on the water ice that forms at Mercury’s north and south poles, which are permanently shadowed. Finding it there was great, she said, but it raises new questions. How did it get there, when, and what might it tell us about how water found its way to Earth?

“You answer one thing in science and you’re left with all these intriguing new questions,” she said.

Seeing Mercury as a tiny dot in front of the sun isn’t going to answer any of those questions — or even allow you to see those alien features. But you should still consider checking it out.  

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Garda Elite units could soon be forced to work out of prefabs because lease ceases

   

Harcourt Square, Inset GRA President Ciaran O’Neill

ELITE GARDAI WORKING WITH NATIONAL UNITS COULD SOON BE FORCED TO WORK FROM PREFABS WHEN THEY HAVE TO VACATE AN OFFICE BUILDING IN THE COMING WEEKS.

Harcourt Square houses specialist Garda units including the Special Detective Unit, the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, CAB, the Fraud Bureau and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, among others.

The Sunday World is reporting that real estate investment trust Hibernia REIT bought the site for €70m last year and the current lease on the building is due to expire next month.

Hibernia REIT plans to redevelop the site and last year received planning permission for the first phase of a redevelopment.

Gardaí will soon have to vacate the site and the Office of Public Works (OPW) has been asked to develop a new building where the national units will be based.

A development site on Military Road, near the Phoenix Park, has been recommended as the preferred site by a working group from OPW and Garda management.

However, that has yet to be signed off on and is unlikely to be ready for some time. In the meantime, gardaí will have to be temporarily rehoused.

It is understood prefabs were one of the suggestions put forward for temporary accommodation of some units.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) has expressed concern at some of the suggested sites.

Ciaran O’Neill, who was elected President of the GRA at the annual conference in Killarney this week, is also the representative for specialist units based in Harcourt Square.

He said: “The Garda Representative Association are aware that the lease on Harcourt Square is due to expire in May 2016.

“We have entered a consultation process at a very late stage and we have a number of concerns that will be raising in that process. We are concerned in respect of some of the proposed temporary relocation sites and the standard of accommodation that will be provided.

“We have a particular concern that there is no budget allocation approved for the proposed new development that will permanently house the National Specialist Units in An Garda Síochána.”

Irish Lawyers fees rose by 5% last year despite clamour to rein in costs

  

Legal professionals put on the poor mouth, but CSO figures show they hiked up fees last year, Ireland’s high legal fees have come under fire from government ministers, State agencies, businesses and insurers.

Lawyers hiked up their prices last year at a time when the government was pushing through legislation originally intended to address high legal costs.

The cost of legal services rose by just over 5% in a six-month period, according to figures compiled by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The increase came as the government was being heavily lobbied by the professional bodies for solicitors and barristers to water down legislation it promised would help reduce fees.

It also suggests the Troika’s demands that Irish legal fees be brought “into the 21st century” may have fallen on deaf legal ears, while the rest of society was forced to endure its harsh austerity measures.

The legal services fees index put together by the CSO based on data from a small number of firms monitors the percentage by which prices rise or fall every three months.

The index shows that after a long period of largely static prices since 2010, prices for legal services rose by 1.3% in the second quarter of 2015 and rose again by 4.1% in the third quarter, and remained at that level until the end of year.

Whether the legal fees continued on their upward trajectory for the first three months of this year remains to seen in the 2016 figures.

But it was the first significant shift in legal prices recorded by the CSO since 2010.

Up to last year, movement in legal prices was marginal with the biggest increase recorded as 2.2pc in 2014, while the biggest decrease in prices was 1.2pc in 2013.

Of course, the latest price hike could be just a blip – as the Law Society suggested last week.

The CSO’s data is based on a small sample of legal prices submitted by up to 20 firms with at least 10 employees on a quarterly basis. The prices include hourly rates for partners and for less senior solicitors, along with fees for conveyancing, litigation and other services.

The Law Society has been at odds with the CSO over its legal prices statistics and disputes the reliability of figures, which it says the CSO itself describes as “experimental” and needing “to be treated with caution”.

However, if the rise in legal prices reflected in the CSO’s figures is not “a blip”, they confirm the European Commission’s worst fears; that officialdom’s appetite to reform the legal profession has been “tamed”.

Since they were first scrutinised by the Troika, Ireland’s legal costs have rung bells all the way to Europe.

In 2011, Istvan Szekely, the head of the so-called Troika overseeing the bailout programme, said the legal profession and its costs needed to be brought “into the 21st century”.

Two years later, the Troika was still unhappy, noting in a draft report that other sectors had experienced “considerable cost adjustments” but legal services remained expensive.

The upshot of the Troika’s dim view of Ireland’s high legal costs was the Legal Services Regulatory Bill, pushed through by Alan Shatter when he was Minister for Justice in 2011, then watered down and diluted – thanks to a four-year legal lobbying offensive – into its eventual incarnation last December.

The legislation originally proposed a “one-stop shop” for barristers and lawyers to set up businesses with other professions – a measure intended to drive competition, lower fees and lower barriers to entry. But these and other measures didn’t make it to the final draft. The Bar Council found aspects of the legislation “unconstitutional”. The Attorney General’s desire to move disciplinary responsibility for solicitors from the Law Society to the new independent legal regulator function was also thwarted. The Law Society retains financial and accounting oversight of solicitors.

In a country report on Ireland published earlier this year, the European Commission’s analysts were sceptical about this supposedly reforming legislation, because of the concessions to the legal profession. “The proof of the pudding will be in the eating,” it said. Much would depend on the new regulatory authority’s ability to “assert its independence” and to “defend society at large from vested interests”.

Critics of Ireland’s high legal costs include the profession’s biggest customers. They include government ministers, numerous State agencies, small businesses, High Court judges and insurers.

Michael Noonan, the Minister for Finance, said legal costs were driving up insurance premiums.

The Medical Protection Society, which indemnifies doctors, has blamed legal fees for driving up health costs for patients and insurance for doctors.

The Health Service Executive’s head of legal services, Eunice O’Raw, herself a barrister, wrote a memo in 2012 saying that legal costs had been “inexplicably high”.

“On occasion, brief fees demanded were of the order of €60,000 or €80,000. Such brief fees for single cases equate with the annual salaries of crown prosecution counsels in England and Wales.”

The maxim goes that the customer is always right. According to the Law Society, the claims about high legal fees are simply wrong. Most firms are non-commercial small practices led by solicitors who saw their incomes drop by 43% during the bust.

“Legal fees have been significantly impacted by the recession and have fallen substantially in recent years in response to intense competition within the profession and downward pressure from clients,” the Law Society said in a statement to the Sunday Independent.

“Because it would infringe competition law, the Law Society does not provide a scale of estimated solicitors’ fees.” Charges are subject to the “normal market forces of supply and demand”.

To finally debunk myths, we asked the Law Society if it would consider conducting its own detailed analysis of legal fees to settle the argument. The Law Society does not get involved in pricing – it leaves that to the free market. Perhaps it’s a project for the new Legal Services Regulatory Authority, whenever the powers that be get around to setting it up.

Babies to be tested to detect drinking during pregnancy

     

NEWBORN BABIES IN SCOTLAND ARE BEING TESTED FOR ALCOHOL AFTER RESEARCHERS RAISED CONCERNS THAT SOME PREGNANT MOTHERS ARE DRINKING REGULARLY.

Samples from hundreds of babies born at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow are being studied for molecules which stay inside unborn children when their mothers drink.

Results from an initial pilot study suggest around 40% of mothers consume some alcohol while pregnant, with about 15% drinking more than one or two small glasses of wine a week.

Drinking in pregnancy can lead to long-term harm to the baby, and the more alcohol consumed, the greater the risk, the Scottish government warns.

Previous research found that even moderate drinking during the earliest months of pregnancy may be damaging.

Funded by Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity, the latest study is to take 750 samples of meconium — the first faeces of a new-born to look for high levels of alcohol by-products. Mothers will also be asked to complete a lifestyle questionnaire.

The occasional drink will not be highlighted by the study, researchers said.

It is hoped the work will lead to targeted messages and interventions and reduce the effects of foetal alcohol syndrome, a condition where children suffer developmental problems because their mothers drank during pregnancy.

Consultant neonatologist Dr Helen Mactier, who is leading the research, said: “Alcohol consumption in pregnancy is almost certainly contributing to a lot of learning disability in Scotland and learning disability is associated with poor school performance and criminality in the long term.”

Dr Mactier said mothers from all walks of life are involved in the study.

She added: “There is an assumption that all problem drinking in pregnancy is associated with poverty and there is no evidence to confirm that.

“It is much easier to conceal problem drinking if you are affluent and if you are clever.”

She added: “I think we’re very well aware that women commonly under-report alcohol consumption in pregnancy. They are scared of repercussions and of being stigmatised and alcohol consumption is normalised in the west of Scotland particularly.

“What one person considers a small drink could be considered a larger drink by someone else. I would concur with the chief scientist’s message that women should not be drinking at all in pregnancy.”

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said pregnant women “need support, not surveillance”.

A spokeswoman added: “This appears to be a worrying development in what is now the increasing policing of pregnancy.

“It is known that consuming large quantities of alcohol throughout pregnancy can result in lifelong learning disabilities, but little evidence of this at lower levels.

“It is unclear how the information gathered in this study will be used, and whether this will set a precedent for more widespread testing of babies — in order to ‘test’ their mothers’ claims of how much drank while pregnant.”

Pieta House prepare for suicide fundraiser on next Saturday 7th May

    

Around one million people a year worldwide take their own lives by suicide – more than those who die by homicide, war and road traffic accidents combined.

Around 500 per year take their own life in Ireland; 400 of them male. A study of young Irish men aged from 18 to 34 found that 78% knew someone who had died by suicide, 42% knew more than one person, and 17% had a close friend who completed suicide.

This year Pieta House marks ten years in existence having opened its doors at a time when suicide was still a taboo subject.

This week the organisation is preparing for Darkness Into Light, an event that is not just the charity’s flagship fundraiser but also a sign of how much the issue is now in the public conscience.

“Nobody would even mention the word then and yet when news got out that we had opened it seemed that we had opened a flood gate of sorrow fear and unspoken grief,” remembers Pieta founder, psychologist Joan Freeman.

Ten years on, the grass roots organisation has helped over 20,000 people in suicidal distress or engaging in self harm. In 2015 Pieta House delivered 49,900 hours of therapy to 5,466 people presenting with suicidal ideation and self-harm.

Today Pieta House has nine centres with a further three planned to open in the next two years – and it depends on fundraising events for a massive 85% of its income.

The Darkness into Light charity walk will place at 4.15am on Saturday, May 7, in 89 venues both at home and abroad – eleven of them in Galway city and county.

The international events – in London, New York, Canada, Abu Dhabi, Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere – will see 50% of proceeds going to Pieta House and the other half going to a local like-minded charity in the respective area.

A real effort has been made to include the rurally isolated, especially islanders with events running on the three Aran Islands, Inishbofin, Arranmore and Tory Island.

Starting while it’s dark and finishing just as dawn is breaking, this beautiful symbolic event gives hope to people affected by suicide and self-harm.

The charity sees social isolation as a major risk factor; those living in rural areas – and particularly in farming communities – are seen to be at greater risk and have higher suicide rates.

There is no one singular cause, but Mental Health Ireland says that one in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives.

For the 500 people lost to suicide every year in Ireland a further 9,500 end up in A&E departments as a result of failed suicide attempts and intentional self-harm injuries.

Donna Burke of Pieta House West explains how the removal of barriers is an essential part of Pieta’s success; all services are free and medical referrals are not required.

“The biggest thing is that it’s self-referral; a person that is feeling maybe that they need help or support can just pick up the phone themselves – they don’t need to go through a doctor, they don’t need to go through a medical service of any kind,” she says

Pride can be a major obstacle preventing people from seeking the help they need. This is particularly true with older generations and people living in small town and rural settings.

“The likes of my dad , I know there’s no way he would go to his doctor and open up about not feeling okay,” she says.

But by removing these barriers, privacy has not been compromised and there’s no waiting time. “Anyone can be seen at any time,” says Donna.

Rural isolation has been recognised as another serious cause for concern. The high rate of suicide among men in rural areas was the driving force behind the ‘Mind Our Farm Families’ campaign – a joint initiative between the IFA and Pieta House.

Farmers face many challenges – financial pressures, red tape, long working hours, and isolation are just the tip of the iceberg.

“Unforeseen changes in farming work conditions such as continual bad weather, failing a herd test, bad harvest, isolation, being over worked, financial difficulties, impending retirement, or ill health are all things that might cause a farmer distress or bring on suicidal feelings,” say the Mind Our Farm Families campaigners.

Tom McEvoy of Pieta House West says the trained vets became ‘our eyes and ears on the ground’ and since then they have seen a big increase in numbers attending therapy.

Tom, who lost his own brother to suicide, is keen to encourage men to talk and to facilitate women to empower themselves to lookout for the signs.

That helps those who turn to Pieta House to make the journey from darkness into light – next weekend, tens of thousands around the world will make that journey for real, and by doing so they’ll shine even more light on what was once a stigma in the darkest of shadows.

There are Darkness into Light walks in Galway city, Tuam, Ballinasloe, Ballygar, Clifden, Kinvara, Inismeáin, Inis Oirr, Inis Mór, Inishbofin and An Cheathrú Rua. For further information go to www.dil.pieta.ie

Experts say we may not be the only intelligent civilization in universe?

    

The question of whether there are other forms of life in the universe has boggled the minds of scientists for time immemorial. And now, University of Rochester physics and astronomy professor Adam Frank has gone on record to say that there may be, or have been other civilizations in our universe, though it would be virtually impossible to communicate with them.

“The question of whether advanced civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe has always been vexed with three large uncertainties in the Drake equation,” said Frank, referring to previous research from the early 1960s.

In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake proposed his eponymous equation which, in brief, lists a number of conditions that would allow technological civilizations to communicate with Earthlings. That was an equation Frank and co-author Woodruff Sullivan of the University of Washington sought to update in their new study.

“We’ve known for a long time approximately how many stars exist,” Frank’s statement continued. “We didn’t know how many of those stars had planets that could potentially harbor life, how often life might evolve and lead to intelligent beings, and how long any civilizations might last before becoming extinct.”

According to Frank, there were still a lot of missing pieces of information when Drake developed his equation over 50 years ago. These included the number of stars that could host some form of life, the evolution progression of other life forms into intelligent creatures, and how long civilizations may exist.

The new A = Nast  · fbt equation is based on Drake’s, but has some of the big unknowns eliminated. The “A” refers to the number of technological species that have formed in the universe’s observable history. Nast pertains to the “number of habitable planets in a given volume of the universe,” while fbt refers to the chances a technological species could come about in one of those habitable planets.

Based on the researchers’ findings, the odds that humans are the only intelligent form of life in the universe is one in 10 billion trillion. But the fact that there are such great distances between stars, plus the uncertainty of how long technological species can exist before extinction, means there’s a very, very good chance humans may never communicate with other civilizations in the universe.

“Our results imply that our evolution has not been unique and has probably happened many times before,” said Frank in conclusion. “The other cases are likely to include many energy-intensive civilizations dealing with their feedback onto their planets as their civilizations grow. That means we can begin exploring the problem using simulations to get a sense of what leads to long-lived civilizations and what doesn’t.”